the risk of fire. Lounges became wardrooms and junior ranks had a gunroom (junior officers' mess). Some cabins were used by chief and petty officers but most were demolished to make way for broadside messes to avoid delays when called to action stations. Holds and other spaces were filled with barrels or oil drums as buoyancy ballast and called ping-pong balls. Even when laden with war stores the ships did not reach the peacetime GRT and carried heavy ballast of roadstone or iron to maintain stability. Horton was uneasy at the new arrivals whose crews were somewhat unready for hostilities and boarded each ship with his technical officers to help the process of familiarisation with Navy methods. Horton asked for more long-range reconnaissance aircraft. Three days after had been torpedoed at Scapa Flow on 14 October 1939, the first seven AMCs arrived and by the end of November eleven AMCs were on patrol; Rawalpindi had already been sunk. Armed merchant cruisers 1939–1941 Sinking of Rawalpindi SS Rawalpindi was requisitioned for the Northern Patrol by the Admiralty on 26 August 1939 and converted into an armed merchant cruiser. Eight elderly 6 in (150 mm) guns and two 3 in (76 mm) guns were added and the ship named . On 19 October in the Denmark Strait, Rawalpindi intercepted the German tanker Gonzenheim (4,574 grt), which had left Buenos Aires on 14 September. The tanker was scuttled by her crew before a boarding party could get on board. The ships sent a wireless message but this was not received by the Germans. On 26 September 1939, restrictions on the operation of the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Atlantic were terminated and after several short voyages, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder concluded that they were not vulnerable to the three Home Fleet battlecruisers in British home waters. On 12 November the (SKL, Naval Warfare Command) of the (High Command of the Navy) decided to send the ships past the British ships watching the Faroes–Iceland gap or those between Shetland and Norway, to threaten the British sea lanes in the North Atlantic. The operation was intended to be a feint, to divert British ships from the hunt for Graf Spee in the South Atlantic. The battleships sailed on 21 November and on 13 November reached the Faroes–Iceland gap. At Scharnhorst sighted a ship, opened fire from then both ships began to rescue